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Greg Garcia with a solo homerun giving the Cardinals a 2-0 lead. The Cardinals are sitting Fowler, Carpenter and Wong against this left handed pitcher. (Fowler is a switch hitter) These three happen to be the three starters struggling the most.

Cardinals NL leading 23rd homerun puts them 2 ahead of Colorado who with Blackmon's homerun today has 21. (note: I don't really care about these things right now, just observing them and looking for anything good)

I'm late, but this strike zone has pretty much already been a 2 run swing against the Cubs (yes I know it doesn't work this way but still).

Albies took a pitch that was per the kzone a strike on the inside corner, called ball 3 when should have been strike 3, couple pitches later homers. Bottom inning, Happ takes a pitch in almost the same spot (both hitting right against a lhp), but per the kzone clearly inside, should have been ball 4, next pitch strikes out; next batter almora homers.

It's shitty weather, so I'd understand a zone where all borderline ones are strikes, I just want some damn consistency.

The Cubs went to the NLCS last year and are of the favorites to win it all this year. How much really has happened?

I guess I just meant in the micro sense. There were several points during the regular season last year where they were really frustrating to watch. I know that's every team at some point, but other Cub fans can corroborate that it felt like the team never really got into a sustained groove.

That the Dodgers and Nats are also playing mediocre is helping to keep me sane this year.

On the "other" end of the scale ... leaving aside the issue of whether it's "tanking" or not, there are a set of teams that didn't seem that interested in improving themselves this offseason. Let's put them into a few categories ....

Starting today, the first group are 20-53 ... that's sub-300 baseball to start the season

Group 2 are 22-27, largely thanks to the Braves

Group 3 are 14-11, thanks to the Pirates

Add it all up and it's 56-91 -- a 381 win percentage or a 62-100 pace. Of course that's due to the super tankers.

Back to the Cubs, our "problem" is that we started with a heavy does of these teams and we're about to go 3-7 against them. The Pirates walloped us twice, the Braves are walloping us for the second time.

Blake Swihart with his second hit of the game, doing decent in part-time work at the start of the season, and I'm wondering if he's making himself an appealing trade target for teams like the Mets that could use a catcher despite not playing much/at all behind the plate.

#53 ... let's see how he does this year. Granderson had 1.5 WAR last year and found a job at 37 (and doing well). Chris Young was a mediocre part-time for ages 31-33 and got a job (for just $2 M). Rajai Davis, 37, signed for $2 M. Matt Adams is still employed for $4 M. He's off to a fine start but the DBacks are playing Owings in RF and might have been interested in somebody like Markakis instead. He'll be in competition this offseason with Hunter Pence but given how poorly Pence is playing, that might be more of a potential landing spot for Markakis 2019 than competition.

If he's a healthy, 1-1.5 WAR player and willing to play for $2-4 M, he can probably still find a job.